Competitions have been held for the development of an asset, such as essays, music, computer software, and so on.
In some competitions, a larger work is divided up into a number of smaller pieces, and competitions held for the development of those pieces. For example, a software program may be divided up into components, and competitions held for the development of each of the components. Development of a component may be divided into design tasks and coding tasks, and a contest held for the design of the component, and another contest held for the coding of the component.
Contest administrators attempt to determine whether a particular competition will result in an asset that will be useful. They also attempt to determine how much they should offer as a prize for the winner of the competition in order to provide sufficient incentive to obtain assets.